Kangaroo -- Popcorn

 

Back around the end of last year, I wrote about the fusion band Kangaroo（カンガルー）which was called the Japanese Shakatak and I was drawn to their "A Night In New York" which was one of the last things that they had recorded before breaking up in 1986. It was quite the surprisingly affecting love ballad as sung by Midori Fukuhara（福原みどり）.

As I also mentioned in the article for "A Night In New York", Kangaroo started its three-year life as more of an instrumental band centered around keyboardists Ikuko Arakaki and Hitomi Maseki（新垣郁子・柵木ひとみ）, and this is one of their tracks, "Popcorn" from their sophomore album "NICE! NICE!! NICE!!!" which came out in 1984. 

Created by Maseki, "Popcorn" does indeed live up to its title with its popping keyboards with Toshiro Matsuda's（松田俊郎）bass and Keiichi Hidaka's（日高恵一）guitar also livening the proceedings. It's simply a funky and happy-go-lucky creation. My good friend and KKP collaborator JTM once told me that he had been looking forward to seeing some vintage Japanese music videos. Well, the video for "Popcorn" couldn't appear more Japanese 1980s especially with what looks comically like the ancestor for the smartphone.

"Popcorn" was so percolating that some of the song was actually used to introduce a segment in a long-running TV Tokyo game show "Quiz Chikyuu Maru Kajiri"（クイズ地球まるかじり...Quiz Taking in the Earth Whole） during the late 1980s.